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Book review, © Copyright 2003, Jim Loy
I read this book several years ago, I was given an advance copy, a pile of single sheets, full of errors, to review before the book was complete. And it was very good, excellent actually. I waited for this book to come out, so I could praise it highly, and then it came out, and I didn't notice. Sorry guys.
These are world class games being played, and there is some good chess analysis here and there, but this book is not designed to be a chess textbook. And it is also not designed to be a computer textbook. What this book is, is a well told story of high-pressure chess (and cutting edge software and hardware design), from the side of Deep Blue's (and Deep Thought's) creators. We get a good feel of how people make a computer play world class chess; we see the computer improve from amateur to Grandmaster strength; we see the results of software bugs; we see conflicting egos; we see many strange and controversial events; and we get some insight into Kasparov's strange self-destruction at the chess board. This is a great story, and it is well-written.
To order this book, click on Amazon.com (goes directly to the book). It seems to be out of print.